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Bizarre: Steven Colbert’s Head Could Soon Be Floating At 100,000 Feet

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It’s a bird. It’s a plane. Nope, that green thing you may see outside your plane window is a miniature of Steven Colbert’s head. MakerBot Industries, the manufacturer of the first affordable 3-D printer, sent a model of Colbert into space — or at least up to 100,000 feet.

Recently on the Colbert Report with a tiny 3-D thermoplastic model of Colbert, MakerBot founder Bre Pettis and Colbert challenged Thingiverse users (MakerBot’s online community) to mashup Colbert’s head with other objects. Cobert’s head appeared on a T-Rex, wearing Princess Beatrice’s recent wedding hat, and as Gumby, among others. But MakerBot didn’t stop there.

This CoberT-Rex was created using a MakerBot printer. (Photo: Thingiverse user JamieClay)

This month they founded the MakerBot Space Program, which they inaugurated by sending Colbert’s model head into the sky on a weather balloon outfitted with a with a Flipcam and a GPS enabled cell phone.

Watch his journey (Steven Colbert was not injured in this launch):

According to MakerBot’s website, the 3-D printers are like factories that sit on your desk: “Best of all, this is completely automated: you hit print, and the machine does all the work. Want to print 100 butterflies? Easy. Want to print an entire chess set? No problem.”

A MakerBot printer can run between $1,299 up to $2,500, with a range of accessories available.